Ashbury

Ashbury is a village and civil parish in the Vale of White Horse. It was part of Berkshire until the 1974 boundary changes transferred it to Oxfordshire. The village is about east of Swindon in neighbouring Wiltshire. The parish includes the hamlets of Idstone and Kingstone Winslow. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 506.ArchaeologyThe Neolithic burial site of Wayland's Smithy is in the parish east of the village.HistoryThe earliest known record of Ashbury is from AD 840, when King Æthelwulf of Wessex granted land at Aisshedoune to his minister Duda. In subsequent charters the toponym evolved as Æcesbyrig in AD 856, Aysshedoune in AD 947, Æcesburuh in AD 953 and 960 and Eissesberie in the 11th century.After AD 953 the manor of Ashbury was granted to Glastonbury Abbey, which then held it until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539. A deer park was established for the Abbey in the south of the parish. It is bounded by an ancient embankment enclosing a rounded area characteristic of Medieval parks. It may equate to the Aysshen Wood recorded in a terrier of the parish in 1519 as covering 415acre. The former deer park is now the Upper Wood of Ashdown Park.